Download Cold War Policymaking in the OAS

A Sword Cuts Two Ways:
Cold War Policymaking
in the OAS
by
H
diplomatic contours of the Cold War made the oganization vital to the
United States, yet the body often thwarted U.S. policymaking and made
Latin Americans the prime movers—and perhaps hegemonic actors—in
the inter-American relationship of the 1950s and 1960s.
Although the United States had presented itself as a champion of
American security since President James Monroe’s famous (or infamous) declaration of 1823, it was not until the beginning of the Cold
War that U.S. policymakers felt compelled to create a formal, collective security system. Old fears, that European empires would nibble at
the edges of the hemisphere in an ideologically neutral positive-sum
game, gave way to new fears that an ideologically driven Soviet empire
would absorb undeveloped regions as well as the United States itself in
a zero-sum game. The United States and the West would resist, wearing down and discrediting the communist system through a policy of
containment and indirect confrontation. Such a struggle could only
be won, however, if Washington cast itself as a reliable champion of
democratic values, and cultivated a roster of allies that would bear
the ideological and real burdens of the long struggle. With the Act of
Chapultepec, Rio Treaty, and Act of Bogotá, the United States and the
twenty republics of Latin America created the Organization of American
States and enshrined principles of democracy, equality, cooperation,
and, perhaps most important, united resistance to direct or indirect
aggression toward any party nation. Gone were earlier notions, like
those of the Roosevelt Corollary, that the United States would be the
sole arbiter of security and responsible governance. But because of the
inordinate power of the United States, and the fact that only the United
States had vested interests throughout the hemisphere, it was at least
implicit that the sensibilities of an earlier era were still in play.
Historian Gaddis Smith regards
the Organization of American States as the ultimate expression of the Monroe Doctrine and the
U.S. assertion of hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Others, like Carolyn M. Shaw, suggest that
the U.S.–Latin American relationship within the OAS featured varying
degrees of cooperation, resistance, and assertion by all members. In a
sense, both scholars are correct and incorrect. On one hand, the OAS
provided a salve for U.S. existential Cold War concerns; the organization
could be a powerful juridical tool to ensure regional security and resist
the Communist menace. On the other hand, Latin Americans found in
the OAS long-sought enshrinement of democracy and nonintervention
as foundations of the inter-American system. As the OAS evolved from
a theoretical to practical tool, however, a curious dynamic emerged.
The smooth conduct of U.S. policy was impossible without the presence of the OAS, but Latin Americans often proved more influential
in the forging of hemispheric policy. Indeed, in most cases it was only
when certain Latin American leaders felt threatened—typically by the
policies of other Latin American nations, rather than by the United
States—that the more powerful pieces of OAS legislation emerged.
When the U.S. Eisenhower administration sought to contain Fidel
Castro, Latin Americans kept the focus on Dominican dictator Rafael
Trujillo. The 1962 Punta del Este Declaration that framed Communism
as an un-American ideology came about only after much horse-trading
and arm-twisting by the United States. The August 1964 censorship of
Cuba—ostensibly serving U.S. interests—resulted primarily from the
efforts of Romulo Betancourt of Venezuela. Decades after the Cold War,
we continue to wrestle with the riddle of the OAS: the ideological and
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Aragorn Storm Miller
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Yet the dynamics of the Cold War tended
to level the playing field between the superpowers and the developing and decolonizing
world. As thinkers like Walt W. Rostow noted,
the advent of nuclear weapons and ideological
blocs meant that there could be no dictation
of terms, either by the superpowers against
one another or by the superpowers against less
powerful nations. Instead, the allegiance of a
given smaller country was a highly valuable
commodity, since dictation would only create
a propaganda opportunity for the other side.
In the American context, Washington had to
balance competing needs. It could not afford
to allow leftist influence to pare off regional
governments, but neither could it appear
heavy-handed in establishing an anti-communist quarantine. The OAS was the ideal forum
in which to maintain such a united front, but
there were twenty nations with which to contend, and only the most skillful propaganda
and diplomacy could suggest that the interests
of the United States and Latin America tended
to be identical.
This situation persisted in the first decade
of the OAS’s existence, such that the United
States found it easier to work outside the
framework of the organization. The 1954
CIA intervention in Guatemala provided the
clearest example of this trend. In the runup to the Ninth International Conference of
American States, scheduled for March, U.S.
and Latin American foreign ministers strongly
disagreed over priorities. The Latin Americans
made it clear that they remained far more
interested in addressing economic underdevelopment than U.S. concerns about the
Red Menace in places like Guatemala, where
Washington was concerned that democratically elected President José Arevalo had veered
dangerously leftward. Argentina and Mexico
voiced particularly strong opposition, suggesting that Washington might use the OAS
as a cover for unilateral intervention in this
case or in the future. U.S. Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles succeeded in shepherding
through a declaration of American solidarity
against Communism, but only after promising
increased U.S. aid, and only after fifty ballots
had been taken. As the Eisenhower administration focused on plans for an invasion of
Guatemala by exile Carlos Castillo Armas,
Washington prepared a case for presentation
to the OAS only as a last resort. Eisenhower
and his aides reasoned that, in light of the
hard sell needed to gain the vaguely worded
Caracas Resolution, obtaining Latin American
support for decisive action against Guatemala
would be nearly impossible.
The U.S. general avoidance of the OAS as a
policymaking tool continued until Fidel Castro
took power in Cuba and began a program of
land reform and other potentially leftist policies. Yet in this case the bulk of attention of
the OAS members centered on Rafael Trujillo,
a close U.S. ally who increasingly pushed the
already-broad precedents of authoritarian rule
in the Americas. During 1956 and 1957, the
FBI and State Department had investigated the
disappearances of Trujillo critic Jesús Galindez,
and Robert Murphy, a U.S. citizen working for
Dominican Airlines. The United States determined that the Trujillo regime had been directly
involved in the deaths of the two men. Yet Trujillo’s willingness to work in lockstep with U.S.
diplomatic and military policy encouraged the
Eisenhower administration to pass only mild
sanctions. By the summer of 1959, however, the
democratic but nonetheless nationalist Romulo
Betancourt had replaced dictator Marcos Pérez
Jiménez in Venezuela and had joined Castro
in a heated rhetorical—and sometimes military—duel with Trujillo. A curious dynamic
thus emerged: Eisenhower tried to muzzle
Trujillo while currying Betancourt’s support
against Castro; Trujillo and Castro stridently
defied each of the other three; and Betancourt
intimated that he would support anti-Castro
measures only after Eisenhower assisted Venezuelan efforts against Trujillo in the OAS.
For the next year, the OAS served primarily as a forum for Latin American criticism
of Trujillo—and by extension U.S. policy in
the hemisphere—rather than a forum for the
U.S. fight against Castro and communism.
The August 1959 meetings in Santiago, Chile,
served as an indirect attack against Trujillo’s
human rights violations and established a
precedent for future OAS human rights commissions. The following year, Trujillo stepped
up his campaign against Betancourt, sending aircraft to drop anti-government leaflets
over Caracas—though the Dominican planes
accidentally flew over the Dutch island of
Curacao—and ordering an assassination
attempt against him. Betancourt survived a
June 1960 car bombing and spearheaded an
immediate convening of the OAS in San José,
Costa Rica. The August meetings determined
that the Trujillo government had indeed been
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involved in these interventions, and called on
the American states to break diplomatic relations with the Dominican Republic. During the
summer of 1960, meanwhile, Cuba had begun
expropriations of U.S.-owned sugar plantations
and threatened U.S. oil interests, compelling
the Eisenhower administration to attempt to
secure OAS support for collective intervention
in future cases where an American republic
might threaten the interests of another. Again,
Latin Americans resisted these veiled attacks
against Cuba. From their perspective, there
was a wide gulf between the direct intervention that Trujillo had pursued, and the more
ambiguous policy Castro executed in Cuba.
When Eisenhower broke ties with Cuba, in
January 1961, only Venezuela and Colombia
followed suit. Even this development owed
principally to the fact that Castro had increasingly turned his ire against these nations rather
than from acquiescence to U.S. desires.
During the spring and summer of 1961, Castro’s neighbors in the Caribbean basin became
increasingly nervous about his political bent
and sought to use the OAS as a means to protect their national security. In May Castro had
affirmed himself as a Communist and as an
ally of the Soviet Union, and Soviet Premier
Nikita Khrushchev pledged armed support to
the island in the case of armed aggression.
Cuba also began broadcasting propaganda
throughout the region, calling for the leftist
overthrow of sitting governments. By year’s
end, Peru and Colombia succeeded in calling
for a meeting of foreign ministers at Punta del
Este, Uruguay, in January 1962 to consider the
problem of Cuban aggression and alignment
with the Soviet Union. The United States was
of course highly in favor of such a meeting. Yet
Washington failed to achieve its goals of getting
the rest of Latin America to break relations with
Cuba and to enforce harsh economic sanctions.
Mexico and the Southern Cone were openly
opposed, and it took promises of increased U.S.
economic aid to get nations like Uruguay and
Haiti on board. Ultimately, the United States
acceded to a compromise in which Cuba would
be determined to be violating the OAS charter
and Caracas Resolution by being under the
control of the alien ideology of Communism,
and the extra-hemispheric control of the Soviet
Union, and therefore suspended from participation in the OAS. Despite this compromise,
consensus remained elusive. Ultimately, the
vote to suspend Cuba barely achieved the
necessary two-thirds margin to pass, being 14–1
with six abstentions. Again, Washington tended
to find itself thwarted by the assertive nations
of Latin America in the Cold War context.
The unprecedented OAS sanctions that
ostracized Cuba—so long a goal of the United
States—occurred primarily as a result of Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt’s feud
with Castro. During 1962 Cuba had begun a
major effort to train leftists throughout the
hemisphere and return them to their home
countries as revolutionaries. In 1963 Venezuela became the epicenter of these subversive
efforts, as guerrillas and urban terrorists associated with the Venezuelan Communist Party
and Leftist Revolutionary Movement sought
to disrupt presidential elections scheduled for
December, perhaps setting the stage for a series
of coups that would usher them into power.
While anecdotal evidence existed that these
sorts of activities occurred, neither the United
States nor Venezuela could offer concrete proof
of Cuban intervention in domestic affairs. In
November, however, the Venezuelan National
Guard discovered a three-ton arms cache on
the Paraguana Peninsula near the border with
Colombia. Subsequent tests proved that the
weapons were of Cuban origin, and Betancourt and his successor, Raul Leoni, sought
to bring Castro to account within the context
of the OAS. Working closely with the United
States, Venezuela sought the concurrence of
the rest of the hemisphere in breaking relations with Cuba, and in the establishment of
an embargo of all trade in nonhumanitarian
goods. As before, however, there proved to be
limits beyond which even close U.S. allies like
Venezuela would not go. Assistant Secretary
of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas
C. Mann spearheaded U.S. efforts to use the
Paraguana arms discovery as a justification
for collective military force against Castro.
Throughout the spring of 1964, Mann and the
State Department crafted what they termed a
“blank check” to be attached to any eventual
resolution coming out of the OAS meetings. If
Cuba could be found guilty of both direct and
indirect intervention in the affairs of Venezuela—thus violating the Rio Treaty as well as
the OAS and UN charters—the United States
might also secure an authorization for unilateral armed force in case of a similar future
incident without having to return to the OAS
for an explicit authorization. Perhaps because
several other Latin American nations perceived
the implications of such a blanket authorization of force, Mann’s “blank check” was a
nonstarter. Ultimately, the Venezuelan drive for
severed relations and an embargo carried the
day by a 15–4 vote. By November, however,
the United States could feel gratified, as every
Latin American nation with the exception of
Mexico had broken off diplomatic relations
with Cuba.
While obviously the United States succeeded
in carrying out the major contours of its antiCastro policy within the OAS framework,
Washington was often forced to wait until Latin
Americans provided the critical mass for punitive action. At least in the pivotal years of the
OAS—the 1950s and 1960s—Latin American
democratic forces and Latin American strongmen were the prime movers in determining the
boundaries of debate. Trujillo had succeeded
in perfecting the institution of the caudillo
during three decades of rule, and might have
extended his dictatorship another decade had
he not engaged in a reckless campaign against
his neighbors. Despite the fact that such
dictatorships violated the OAS Charter guarantee of democratic governance—a fact that
Betancourt was fond of stressing—the United
States was willing to overlook the problem.
When Trujillo sought to export his despotism,
Washington had little choice other than to
cashier its ally and support Latin American
initiatives. Washington, further, was forced to
wait three years for the rest of Latin America
to accede to its desire to fully isolate Cuba
politically. And again, this outcome centered
on Castro’s decision to export his revolution
in the form of arms deliveries to Venezuelan
leftists. Absent the missteps of these antidemocratic leaders, U.S. use of the OAS would have
been even more complicated than it was. The
OAS provides a unique window into the complexity of U.S. policymaking, and U.S.–Latin
American relations, in the Cold War context.
The centrality of ideology to the geopolitical
showdown between the United States and
the Soviet Union tended to make rhetoric as
important as reality. The United States needed
to be able to point to evidence that it was
on the side of justice and democracy, both
in terms of its policies and dealings with the
wider world. Bodies like the UN, NATO, and
the OAS served these functions to an extent.
But the emphasis on collectivism also served
to restrict the United States. The relationship
with Latin America starkly illustrated such a
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problem. Having shepherded the creation of
what ought to have been a powerful tool for
the exertion of hegemony, Washington often
had to ignore the OAS altogether, or wait until
Latin Americans partially endorsed U.S. policy,
so that the “mousetrap” functioned in the way
that the United States had intended.
Aragorn Storm Miller is a doctoral candidate
in the UT Department of History. ✹
LLILAS
Conferences
Fall 2009
Latin America in the Cold War
(see article p. 7)
Conference on Indigenous
Languages of Latin America IV /
Congreso de Idiomas Indígenas
de Latinoamérica IV
Migration during an
Era of Restriction
Spring 2010
XXX Annual ILASSA Student
Conference (see article p. 44)
Abriendo Brecha VII:
Opening a Path
Walls: What They Make
and What They Break
The 2010 Lozano Long Conference:
Republics of Fear: Understanding
Endemic Violence in Latin America
Today (see article p. 34)